


it goes away in the end

by unchosenone



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Gen, after the end, boy this sounds like a bummer as i'm writing these tags, everyone's dead dave, hope???, revenant!vax
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 03:18:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11842875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unchosenone/pseuds/unchosenone
Summary: Vax and Keyleth after the end, carrying collections of the friends they used to know.(But: they are hardly people anymore, he thinks, and the rabbit hole is already pulling him in. They’re no more than cobbled mosaics of the friends they used to know.)





	it goes away in the end

“I think it’s time to leave,” says the man, sitting high on a hill over what used to be the world.

The woman behind him leans forwards, hair tickling his cheek as she rests her head for a moment. “We have to move fast if we don’t want him to see us here,” she agrees. Despite the words, her arms wrap around his shoulders tightly.

He turns his head towards her softly, wanting to bury himself in the long mane of red. His is tangled and knotted, but he keeps hers pristine, adorned with half a dozen tiny braids he can no longer practice on anyone else. The lines around her eyes crinkle in a smile at the sight of his face.

That’s truly the best marker of time: the fact that Keyleth is showing her age. They’d always thought it would be the reverse: Vax growing old and grey while she looked the same as ever. But the decades have weighed on her and Vax…Vax shows nothing but the decay of death he continues to elude. The dark wings on his chest have expanded their reach to the peaks of his shoulders, bruise-like feathers winding down his arms, but not a single new wrinkle creases his face.

On the bright days, he is inexpressibly relieved that Keyleth has the durability of a hundred ever-shifting animal forms and the longevity to stay with him, keeping him company in the unending struggle he’s locked into with their foe. On the darker days, he mourns and seethes that others couldn’t, that death has inexplicably closed its doors, locking his friends away and trapping the final pair here.

A soft press of lips to the dark veins pushing up his collar breaks his stewing. The kiss is brief, before she draws a deep inhale of preparation.

“Come on,” Keyleth says. The long legs bracketing his retract, and a moment later she’s standing, offering him a stone-gauntleted hand.

The bag of holding hangs heavy against his hip as he accepts. They were good together; strength, speed, and power. It was practically unthinkable the goliath would fall, ages and ages ago before nothing became unthinkable. Now it’s impossible not to think.

(For all that longevity and power, she’ll fall someday too, he knows, and then it will just be him. He wonders if any of the world will still exist.)

They are hardly people anymore, he thinks, and stands, and lets her lead him with sure steps towards a nearby grove. He just follows and keeps ahold of her hand, trying not to get lost in his own head. His ability to self-motivate is ever-waning, and Keyleth is the last remaining pillar of strength. Besides, she’s good at picking destinations; she can lead him wherever she wants.

(She was meant to be a leader once. She would have been good at it, but there is no one left to lead. Just him. He supposes she’s still a good leader, for that small opportunity.)

But: they are hardly people anymore, he thinks, and the rabbit hole is already pulling him in.

They’re no more than cobbled mosaics of the friends they used to know, now. His hand reaches up on instinct for the once-blue feathers someone else put in his hair before he stops himself. They’re already falling apart, kept together only by Keyleth’s magic. They don’t need him fiddling with them anymore. There are sturdier things to fiddle with besides, the bag or the knuckles.

He can even pretend those are for pragmatism’s sake. Some other pieces too: Keyleth has white dragon scales protecting her shins, the rest of the armor set long-since lost. Vax has a sword that doesn’t hum as much as it used to on his hip, and a technological marvel he doesn’t understand that conjures lightning on his wrist.

But if he were to be honest—and they try to avoid being entirely honest these days—he knows most of it is only important in what it means to them. Even the sword is practically pointless, ill-suited to him. Diplomacy hasn’t held a charge for longer than a second in years, and no one he knows is left to fix it.

(The holy symbol for a god that isn’t his, tucked tightly away in a sealed pocket, certainly brings him no help. It comfort is questionable too, bittersweet at best. But she wanted him to have it, pressing it in his hands as she bled out from wounds he couldn’t seem to heal and poison he couldn’t seem to stop.

He thinks that was the worst sometimes, the slow death. At least Vex’ahlia turned to dust in the blink of an eye.)

Keyleth drops his hand as she picks up into a run, spurred on by something only she can sense or simply her own worry, he can’t tell. He doesn’t ask either; follows suit without a word as his gaze now lingers on her keepsakes too. He so accustomed to the pounding of his heart that the heightened pace doesn’t put a dent in his rumination.

A step ahead of him, the spire on her back bounces next to a bow with no quiver that neither of them can use anyway, it and the armor all that was left in the pile of ash that used to be his sister. Keyleth cares even less for the illusion of pragmatism than he does. He thinks the vines twisting over its limbs simply bring her comfort.

The multi-colored mantle must as well, though it remains as pristine and useful as it ever was, coursing with the magic of her long-dead people. But it covers the most ragged coat he’s ever seen—color faded from royal blue to a dull greyish, most of the golden buttons lost, the bottom singed. She ripped the sleeves off herself when they kept getting in the way, and then cried over them after.

(He loves her. He loves her with a ferocity, and a fear he cannot put words to.)

There are a dozen smaller trinkets too, hidden everywhere on her body. Six strips of cloth or leather tied around her arm. A lock of pale hair tucked carefully in a handkerchief inside her clothing. If she turned around, he’d see the raven skull hanging around her neck too, a twin to his.

Well. Not quite a twin. Hers is pure bone, recollected from the corpse of its original recipient. (She said she didn’t want to forget when she first gifted it, but they’re not likely to now.) His is cast in silver, both a pale imitation and a stronger construction, sure to be around long after her fragile bone has cracked.

They reach the trees.

“Where to?” Vax asks, putting as much life into his voice as he can muster. Adrenaline, danger, their inevitable deaths (who can say how many times he’s already died); none of it can so much as break his train of thought anymore. But for Keyleth, for his love and, perhaps more importantly, for his last remaining friend, he can snap himself out of it.

She shakes her head, eyes darting around. “Not here.” There’s fire in her expression. (Sometimes he thinks that’s a keepsake too, Grog’s old rage now simmering behind Keyleth’s eyes.)

They are being watched, then. Vax looks around, even though he knows he won’t be able to see whatever she can sense. Vecna has never needed visible means to spy on them. Ages and ages ago, Vax might have still done his best to make the experience miserable—irritating, at least—for him. Most of his energy goes into pushing himself forward now.

An incantation worn with memory forms on Keyleth’s lips, hand pressing against bark.

He lied, before. About there being good days. Maybe he still held onto some, weeks or months ago. Certainly not since Ank’harel. (They don’t go to cities anymore. They haven’t been safe in cities for years. But they still hoped there’d be cities.) Now, these are what pass for his good days, the hours not-terrible at best, where he doesn’t pray death would finally keep him. In the better moments, he can smile at Keyleth and be relieved beyond words he has someone who is unfailing determined to stay up, never letting him lay down and give into eternity. In the harder moments, his thoughts get all tangled (fucked) up, negativity running parallel to clear-headedness (realism running parallel to optimism), impossible to distinguish one from the other.

The familiar sound of a trunk splitting open breaks through the hush of dusk, and then sunlight from across the world filters in through the gap. And she takes his hand again, and moves forward, and turns back to look, and smiles at him over her shoulder, and—

They have failed a dozen times. He still fails to self-motivate, fails to get up sometimes, loses the energy to keep his own hair neat, can’t adjust quickly to the losses, falls down the rabbit hole when he shouldn't. But he can hold fast to her hand and keep moving. For all his life, love has never failed to spur him on.

In the moment before he slips away, there’s a tiny sliver of something not unlike hope in his heart, and he almost smiles as he raises a hand to flip off the unseen eyes watching them.

**Author's Note:**

> This arc begs for a million depressing AUs, and most of them involve Vax outliving everyone.  
> Not the first fic I’ve written, but this is the first time I’ve posted anything here, so comments and feedback are greatly appreciated <3


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